We see couples every weekend at our intensives that are struggling. Many say they aren’t in love with each other anymore. And that statement prompts me to ask one of my favorite questions, “What’s the opposite of love?” It’s always fun to watch them as their faces and hearts and heads all connect with a reflexive answer, and they quickly blurt out, “Oh, I don’t hate him or her, I just don’t love them anymore”. Well, let me ask you, what’s the opposite of love? If you’re like most of us, you answered hate… But it’s not hate. It’s selfishness. How do I know that’s the correct answer? From that very familiar passage of Scripture called the Love chapter, I Corinthians 13. You may even have had it read at your wedding ceremony. Love is patient. Love is kind. Does not envy. Does not boast. Is not proud. Does not dishonor others. It’s not self-seeking. It’s not easily angered. Keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil, but rejoices with truth. It always protects. Always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails.
I want to take just a minute to break down some of those descriptors of love and put them in the context of our marriages. Paul says love is patient. It has a capacity to accept or tolerate or delay trouble or suffering without getting angry or easily upset. Are we willing to wait for our spouse? We don’t need to get our own way. We can choose to put our wants and needs second. Love is kind. It generously extends consideration, grace and mercy, even when it’s not deserved. And those next phrases… love doesn’t envy, boast, it is not proud, not self-seeking…all tell us that real love puts others our spouses before ourselves. Love doesn’t envy. It’s not discontented or resentful about what others are doing or what they may have. It doesn’t boast, it isn’t proud. It’s not trying to build itself up by bragging. When we take our spouses down so that we look better, that’s dishonoring. And that’s not what love does. This passage tells us that love protects and believes the best of our spouses.
It goes on to say, love’s not easily angered. Researchers tell us that most of our anger comes from our sense of being entitled. We believe that we deserve something we’re not getting, so we get angry. And then he says, love doesn’t keep score, doesn’t try to rationalize why we’re in a better place, because we have less offenses on our scoreboards than our spouses do. True love doesn’t keep score any more than God does.
Hopefully you’re catching the theme that the love God desires for us to display to one another as husbands and wives is selfless and sacrificial. Just like Jesus’s love for you and me. So next time you’re feeling like you don’t love your spouse, ask yourself the simple question, “How am I defining love selfishly or selflessly?”
